We’ve been meaning to post this one for a while.
In City of Hopewell v. Shree Arihant Motel, Inc., No. 251193 (Va. July 16, 2026), the Virginia Supreme Court held that a municipality which demolished an abandoned shopping center by burning it down is immune from the owner’s tort and statutory claims, though the city allegedly failed to comply with the procedures governing blight abatement. The owner’s inverse condemnation claim survived, however, because sovereign immunity does not bar a claim under the self-executing takings provision of the Virginia Constitution.
The Colonial Corner shopping center was built in the 1970s, but after unsuccessful redevelopment efforts, became run down. The city declared it blighted, unsafe, unfit for occupancy, and a danger to public health and safety, and pushed for its demolition.
In February 2021 the city notified the owner that it do a controlled burn pursuant to its authority to abate “spot blight,” and a few weeks later, with assistance from neighboring fire departments, Hopewell burned the shopping center to the ground.
Because the city apparently did not comply with the statutory and municipal procedures governing spot-blight abatement (statutes and local ordinances required the city council to adopt an ordinance declaring the property blighted, which it never did), the owner sued in state court, alleging tort and inverse condemnation claims.
The city asserted it was immune from the tort claim, and the owner argued argued that actions taken outside the scope of the government’s statutory authority should not receive sovereign immunity protection. The court disagreed: the municipal sovereign immunity turns on the nature of the governmental activity, not whether government performed that activity correctly.
Blight abatement being a governmental function, it didn’t matter how carefully or in accordance with the law the city carried out that function:
Blight abatement is a governmental function. It involves the exercise of a municipality’s discretionary authority and promotes the health, safety, and general welfare of a municipality’s citizens. When the City exercised its discretionary authority to demolish a blighted shopping center that posed a threat to public safety, it engaged in a governmental function that triggered the protection of municipal sovereign immunity.
Slip op. at 9.
The owner next argued that the blight designation was merely a pretext for the city’s real objective, redevelopment. But to the court, it didn’t matter whether the city was in part so motivated. As long as one of the motivations was blight abatement, that is good enough. The court concluded that once a governmental purpose is part of the equation, the sovereign is immune.
The court drew a sharp distinction, however, between the tort claim and the takings claims. Even though the tort claim are barred by sovereign immunity, the constitutional claim cannot be because sovereign immunity does not shield government from liability under self-executing constitutional provisions. The inverse-condemnation claim therefore remains alive on remand (the court provided no clue about whether the city’s actions were indeed an inverse condemnation, however).
We’re guessing that the practical result of this decision is that future claimants will look more to inverse claims than run the risk of a claim being barred by sovereign immunity. What that tells us is that the very fuzzy zone between “tort” and “inverse condemnation” may get a lot fuzzier.
City of Hopewell v. Shree Arihant Motel, Inc., No. 251193 (Va. July 16, 2026)
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